s, the most
telling criticisms, happy characterizations of prominent political
leaders, or foreign rulers, or members of his own Cabinet; always
surprising by his candor, astonishing by his memory, and diverting by
his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he has that rare type
of memory which retains details as well as mass and generalities. One
night something started him off on ancient history, and one would have
thought he was just fresh from his college course in history, the
dates and names and events came so readily. Another time he discussed
palaeontology, and rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the
main facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that very day.
He sees things as wholes, and hence the relation of the parts comes
easy to him.

At dinner, at the White House, the night before we started on the
expedition, I heard him talking with a guest,--an officer of the
British army, who was just back from India. And the extent and variety
of his information about India and Indian history and the relations of
the British government to it were extraordinary. It put the British
major on his mettle to keep pace with him.

One night in camp he told us the story of one of his Rough Riders who
had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders,
wherever they are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had
come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote the President,
and his letter ran something like this:--

"DEAR COLONEL,--I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye,
but I did not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my
wife."

And the presidential laughter rang out over the tree-tops. To another
Rough Rider, who was in jail, accused of horse stealing, he had loaned
two hundred dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise,
in due time the money came back. The ex-Rough wrote that his trial
never came off. "_We elected our district attorney_;" and the laughter
again sounded, and drowned the noise of the brook near by.

On another occasion we asked the President if he was ever molested by
any of the "bad men" of the frontier, with whom he had often come in
contact. "Only once," he said. The cowboys had always treated him with
the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; "and the few
real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only
was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a _bona fide_
"ba